Perhaps those who sympathize with Adrian do so because of the unrequited love of his secretary. Couldn't he have "used" her to get him off, but instead chose a more honorable way out: arrest for homicide?

Perhaps, but even there his confession was one done entirely without any remorse (by his own admission) for a crime done for ultimately the pettiest of reasons.

Eric...when you mentioned the Twilight Zone episode with Donald Pleasence, The Changing of the Guard, my heart lifted. What a wonderful episode. I have it on tape and I put it in my vcr, but my freakin vcr is being a pain... I can't play it, nor can I eject it, so I couldn't watch it on our other vcr....I am a bit angry right now.......I wanted to post what he exactly says at the end...about how he left his mark upon his students, and he will never be ashamed to die..because he has won that small victory for humanity..........it was so beautiful......

I don't think it's that difficult to sympathise with Adrian Carsini, when you compare him to his brother, who wanted everthing for nothing.

Carsini was not a shrewd businessman, but he was dedicated and professional and he had spent about half of his life building-up the reputaion of the family's vineyard.

The point about the lack of proof in relation to Carsini's guilt is very valid - it's merely circumstantial evidence: we know that Carsini would not have been so careless to let the wines oxidise in his cellar....

Personally, I liked the episode a lot, even though a mutual respect develops between Columbo and Carsini (some of the best episodes in the series invariably displayed sour relationships between detective and murderer!).

I think there's a goof with the weather too - I'm pretty sure that when Columbo finds out the weather on the day of the murder, it was showery and about 50 odd degrees (Fahrenheit?). How the hell do it shoot up to over 100 degrees on one of the days thereafter?

I watched a little of this last night. I had never noticed that the actor Regis Cordic who plays Lewis (one of Carsini's wine drinking buddies) also plays the Deputy Commisioner in Candidate for Crime.